Playboy Enterprises, Free Casino Games Enliven Online Gaming Industry

Chicago-based Playboy Enterprises, publisher of Playboy Magazine, and producer of movies and DVDs, this week announced that it was going into the online gambling business, launching sites that will be available everywhere in the world, save the U.S.

Meantime, a London-based gaming company introduced a "free" gaming competition, where customers compete for points, over a one month period of time, in popular online games like video poker, blackjack, slot machines and roulette. The winner at the end of the month receives a $500 prize, from http://www.onlinegamblingsolutions.com

Playboy said on Monday that it is launching its poker site by the fourth quarter of this year.

The site is going to be run by Oceania Caribe Licensing, a privately held firm in the Netherlands Antilles that licenses Playboy's brand, according to CryptoLogic Inc., a Toronto-based developer of Internet gambling software.

CryptoLogic is producing Playboy's poker site, as well as another betting-related site that Playboy announced just a few months ago.

Neither site will accept bets from gamers in the United States, Playboy is taking "all precautions possible" to enforce that ban, said Playboy spokesperson Linda Marsicano, at Playboy headquarters.  This includes blocking access to sites based on the Internet Protocol (IP) address of the computer user, and refusing to use American credit cards to settle account balances, she said.

Free Gambling?

The free games competition commences this week. Every player starts off with 1000 points and the player with the most points at the end of the month will win $500, said Tim Godfrey, director of Online Gambling Solutions, the U.K.-based firm, heading the new project.

Winnings are deposited directly into the bank account of the winner within two working days. The names of the top ten players are going to be published on the Website each month.

"We are confident that this new competition is going to be a big success," said Godfrey. "If enough interest is generated, we will increase the prize fund to $1000, maybe even $1500 next month."

The site, -http://www.onlinegamblingsolutions.com - is seen by many as one of the top gaming portals on the Internet. This month has also seen the launch of the site's "live sports-betting odds" feature in which avid sports enthusiasts are now able to check the latest scores and betting odds of all the major sporting events as they happen around the world.

Godfrey said that since the controversial arrest of David Curruthers, the former CEO of BetOnSports.com, online gaming has been in seeming turmoil.  Curruthers plead not guilty in court this week.

But Sue Schneider, the publisher of St. Louis-based Interactive Gaming News, an industry journal said betting volume hasn't actually been affected by the election year legal contretemps. "Poker sites are still buzzing with activity," she said.

That means that the players are calling the U.S. government's bluff.

Many online gaming experts, including Godfrey, believe the industry will come back stronger than ever. With the launch of online games by Playboy, one of the world’s best-known brands,  and freebies to entice consumers by another leading producer, that seems to be a very safe wager.

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